Joshua Tree

Sunday, the 28th-Joshua Tree. We got up at an ungodly hour to drive out there and Daryl made it in two hours because he's like a demon on the road. While we were there, we just couldn't figure out why people lived out there in the heat. I mean, there's huge communities of people living out there. There had been flooding recently so the roads out to the east side were off limits. So, no cactus garden, but we did get to visit the rocks that Daryl climbed when he first moved out to SF. It was really quite lovely, even though there were times I felt like I was going to faint from the heat, which was like, almost the whole time. We did get to see some neat petroglyphs and Daryl did a little bit of climbing after which, he felt like fainting. But we did see some great desert flowers and tons of tiny toads. And we saw a real roadrunner running across the road. I half expected to see a coyote following behind. Or maybe an ACME 1000 lb weight falling from the sky. Or not. Afterwards, we were starving so we went to the nearest Denny's and had what I think was the worst service ever. But I suppose that's what I should expect of a Denny's. We also got a chance to visit with Daryl's mom's husband's sister's family in Hemet, which is pretty much in between Joshua Tree and LA. Dave Kelsey's (Daryl's mom's husband) sister Sandra moved out here in California and had three daughters. And now all three of them have kids, too. One of the daughters, Angela has two boys who are really well behaved kids and very athletic according to all of the trophies we saw around the house. Another daughter lives up in Sacramento and she just had a baby a month ago, but she wasn't there when we visited. Although we did go to their wedding, which coincided with the last time Daryl's mom visited. April, another daughter, just had a baby too, but it was premature and so had been in the hospital for a while before they let her out. Such a tiny thing! It's hard to believe she's going to grow up to be an adult. She was under 5 pounds when she was born but she does look like she's gaining weight right now. Sandra fed us and we chatted for hours. By the time we left we were so exhausted that when we got home we just crashed.